


Past Scrapes

by winteringinrome



Category: Gentleman Jack (TV)
Genre: All the canons, Anne has Secrets, Canon Compliant, Canon Lesbian Relationship, Cunnilingus, Dirty Talk, F/F, Oral History, Oral Sex, Past Relationship(s), Pining, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Scissoring, Secrets, Threesome, Threesome - F/F/F, Tribadism, Useless Lesbians, Vaginal Fingering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-19 07:36:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22007437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winteringinrome/pseuds/winteringinrome
Summary: “Have you done this before?”“No,” she had said. “Of course not.”But can that be right? Ann soon comes to wonder. Can one get to be as clever with tongue and finger as Anne is without a little practice?Ann moves into Shibden and soon comes to realise that she is not the first woman to have been brought across the threshold by Anne Lister.
Relationships: Anne Lister (1791-1840)/Ann Walker (1803-1854)
Comments: 188
Kudos: 452





	1. Chapter 1

“Have you done this before?”

“No,” she had said. “Of course not.”

But can that be right? Ann soon comes to wonder. Can one get to be as clever with tongue and finger as Anne is without a little practice? Anne mentions close friends, past travel companions, old confidants and Ann thinks, was it her then? Or her? Or else her? But these women, in Anne’s telling, are all chaste, platonic, the dearest friends but nothing more.

So the matter has lain lightly between them, a delicate balance of the scales; on one side is Anne’s denial, on the other Ann’s decision not to question it.

But then they take the sacrament together and Ann moves to Shibden and, from that moment, she finds those scales begin to tip, a weight here, a weight there, until she cannot ignore the fact that she is not the first woman to have been brought across this threshold by Anne Lister.

\--

It is Ann’s very first day at Shibden and she is in the drawing room, sorting through some of the smaller boxes that have been brought from Crow Nest. Anne has gone down to the stables to discuss with Thomas whether there is space to store the Walker carriage there, so Ann is alone as she sorts her things into piles for the study, for upstairs, for the outhouses.

Alone but very aware, all the while she unpacks, of a great whispering going on in the kitchen to her left, which increases in urgency and volume until, at last, the maidservant, who Ann thinks is called Hemingway, enters the drawing room with the abrupt propulsion of someone who has been shoved.

In the sudden silence that follows her arrival, Ann looks up at her in surprise. The maid throws a furious glare back to the kitchen, where Ann just glimpses John and his brother before they duck out of view. When the maid turns back to face a perplexed Ann but still doesn’t speak, only chews her lip and glowers all the more, Ann is forced to break the silence herself.

“Hello,” she says uncertainly, “it’s Hemingway isn’t it?”

“Yes ma’am,” Hemingway bobs and stares determinedly at a spot just over Ann’s right shoulder, then, with apparent effort, blurts out, “Sorry to disturb you ma’am… only Joseph and John have been asking us about the trunks and the boxes that your manservant brought over, with all your clothes and that. They’re sat in the kitchen now and Mrs. Cordingley wants rid of them only she didn’t say... and we weren’t sure...” She glares even harder at the air behind Ann’s head and then lets out in one breath, “Is it to be the usual arrangement ma’am?” _Isittobetheusualarrangementmaam._

Ann looks at her blankly, “The usual arrangement?”

“With your things,” Hemingway says. “Are they to be brought up to Miss Lister’s bedroom or...?”

Suddenly it is Ann who is having difficulty meeting the other woman’s gaze. At Hemingway’s question a wave of heat has flushed through her, reddening her cheeks and making the blood roar in her ears. She will be sleeping in Anne’s room, of course, but are the servants to know that? Is she supposed to acknowledge it? For appearances’ sake should she be asking for her things to be put in another bedroom? She wishes desperately she had thought to ask Anne all this before now.

“Well,” she is just starting to stammer, “I am not quite...” when she is interrupted by the arrival of Cordingley, who has come in from the kitchen garden.

“Rachel,” Cordingley calls out, “what are them boxes still doing in my kitchen?” She walks to the entrance of the drawing room, brushing earth onto her apron but stops short when she spots Ann.

“Sorry ma’am.” She hesitates and then turns to Hemingway, plainly confused as to why the two women are stood opposite one another in silence, amongst all Ann’s unpacking, each as red as the other.

“I was asking Miss Walker about the boxes,” Hemingway says meaningfully. “John’s here to take them upstairs, only we wasn’t sure if it was to be the usual arrangement, like when Mrs. L–”

But at that, Cordingley delivers a swift jab of her elbow right into Hemingway’s side and Hemingway shuts her mouth with a snap.

“Miss Lister has said you’re to be in her room, ma’am,” Cordingley says loudly, not quite meeting Ann’s gaze either. “At least until the renovations are done on the west wing of the house. If that suits you, ma’am?”

“Yes of course,” Ann murmurs, relieved.

“We best tell John that now,” Cordingley says and begins to hurry Hemingway from the room, “So as your things are up there in time for Eugenie to sort through before dinner.”

“Thank you Cordingley.”

“And I’ll have Joseph take these riding things out to Thomas.”

“You _bruised_ me,” Ann hears Hemingway mutter as the two women make their way back into the kitchen. “Right between the ribs that was and your elbow’s sharp as anything. And what for, anyway? It _is_ the usual–”

But Cordingley shushes her again and Ann cannot hear any more and she is left, baffled and blushing, in the quiet they leave behind them.

\--

It is only afterwards, once her embarrassment has subsided a little, that Ann realises how strange Hemingway’s question had been. It was not that she had asked if Ann were to stay in Anne’s room, but if she was to be put in there, _as usual_. Only Ann has not stayed a single night at Shibden before, let alone in Anne’s bedroom, and if such an arrangement was not usual for her, then for whom would it be?

She puzzles over the matter all the while she is finishing her unpacking in the drawing room. By the time she has emptied the last box there and moved to the study to try and find space on the shelves for her books, she has determined to ask Anne about it as soon as she returns from the stables.

“‘The usual arrangement’?” repeats Anne, now leaning against her desk, thumbing through Ann's copy of Perkin Warbeck, “I have no idea. When was it said?”

“It was Hemingway. She came to ask me where my things should be put. If it were to be the guest room or the usual arrangement.”

Anne blinks at her for a moment, her brow furrowed, then her face wipes blank and she shakes her head and laughs.

“I am still none the wiser I’m afraid,” she says lightly. “Hemingway you said? I wouldn’t pay too much heed to anything she tells you. She can be _uncommonly_ dim when she wants to be it. It is really quite remarkable.”

“But Cordingley elbowed her when she said it, it was as though–”

“Well then, Cordingley must have thought it nonsense too. Now,” Anne moves to stand behind Ann and winds an arm around her waist, “there is an order to these shelves, you know. You can’t just waltz in here and start putting Charlemagne next to Shelley.”

“I thought that was the perfect place for him!”

“Oh no, Miss Walker, there is a very complex system at work here.”

Ann smiles despite herself, “Is there really?”

Anne’s lips are soft on Ann’s bare shoulder. “It is an ingenious system of cataloguing and classification,” she murmurs, “all of my own devising.”

“Of course.”

The arm about Ann’s waist pulls her closer. “I shall teach you it, if you like?”

“That would be…” Ann’s breath hitches as Anne presses in close behind her and begins to trail her hand lower, “…sensible.”

“It will take some time though, of course. You will have to be a very diligent student,” Anne says low and hot against her ear. “Perhaps we had best close the door and begin our lessons straight away.”

And somewhere between Anne’s lips on her throat and her fingers at her petticoats, Ann forgets all about the business with Hemingway and the boxes and the usual arrangement.

\--

“Do you like hunting and riding, Miss Walker?” Captain Lister bellows from across the dinner table that evening.

It is their first time dining together as a group of five – the Captain, Aunt Anne, Marian, Anne and Ann herself. She is doing her best not to appear nervous.

“I do like to ride–” she says, then again a little louder when the old man motions at her to speak up. “I do like to ride, Captain Lister, but I’ve never hunted and don’t believe I should care for it.”

“Ann sketches,” Anne says as she reaches over Marian for the basket of bread. “She’s very good.”

Ann blushes and shoots her a pleased little smile.

“Oh, do you?” Marian says enthusiastically from behind the bread-basket, which Anne manages to hold before her face for slightly longer than seems strictly necessary. “I’d love to see some–”

“Miss Norcliffe is very fond of hunting,” Captain Lister continues, clearly oblivious to the change in conversation. “She sent us this hare, you know.” He waves his fork at the steaming pie at the centre of the table.

“Miss Norcliffe?”

“My friend,” Anne says quickly. “Isabella Norcliffe of Langton Hall. I have known her since my school days. She sent over a basket of hare and a brace of pheasants this morning.”

“Yes, yes,” Captain Lister gestures impatiently, “Don’t you know Isabella? I would have thought– Anyway. She is always sending Anne baskets of this dead thing or that dead thing.” He takes another large mouthful of his pie. “There was a deer once – d’you remember that, Anne? She sent the whole blessed thing and it wouldn’t fit on the kitchen table, blood every–”

“Jeremy,” his sister puts a gently restraining hand on his arm, “Miss Walker does not want to hear this while she is eating her dinner.”

Ann blushes, “Well, this hare is very good. How kind of Miss Norcliffe, to send over so much of what she catches. She must be a very dear friend to you, Anne.”

And at that Marian suddenly chokes on her mouthful of hare, quite dramatically, and coughs and splutters so long that she eventually has to go out to the hallway to compose herself. Once she has left, Aunt Anne talks loudly about the weather.

Ah, Ann thinks, was the usual arrangement for Miss Norcliffe then?

\--

And then there’s the letter.

The letter arrives on Saturday, in the last of the weekend's post, brought into the small sitting room on the coffee tray by Joseph shortly after 6’o’clock. Anne and Ann are sitting next to each other at the desk, working on their respective accounts. Washington had brought Ann’s paperwork over from Crow Nest that morning and she has spent three painstaking hours putting, with Anne’s assistance, some order to the Lightcliffe rent-books.

Anne sorts through the envelopes while Joseph pours the coffee, extracting one for Ann, one for Marian and one for herself.

Ann’s letter is from Elizabeth, three pages in her close, curling script. As she leans back in her chair and scans the first lines, Anne calls through the open door for Marian.

“Marian! A letter.”

Sackville is ill again, James has a new tooth, the new baby – Elizabeth, to be Lizzie – is sweet-tempered and sleeps well. Ann is just reading about the Sutherlands’ recent trip to Aberdeen, when Marian enters.

“From Mr. Abbott, I presume,” Anne says, holding the envelope out to her, “though I can scarcely make out the hand.” She flicks her gaze up at her sister. “ _Can_ he write? Only you never know with– ”

“Of course he can write!” Marian flushes with indignation and snatches the envelope from Anne’s grasp. “In fact, he sent me several very fine, very charm– Anyway,” she cuts herself off, evidently fighting not to rise to her sister’s bait, “it’s not from him, I told you that was all off.”

“Oh yes. I forgot. Well, who is it from then?” Anne takes a sip of her coffee and widens her eyes at Ann. “Not another gentleman-caller already? Goodness, Marian.”

“No it’s not– “

“Because I think father has only just recovered from dinners with the last one.”

“Those dinners went well, which you’d know if you’d _bothered_ –”

“And it would not be seemly, so soon after–”

“Seemly!” Marian scoffs, her eyes flicking quickly to Ann and then away again. “I presume I am not to follow your example then, Anne? As you always manage to move on so swiftly from your own... disappointments.”

Without Ann quite understanding why, the air in the room is suddenly ten degrees cooler. She looks over at Anne, expecting an explanation, but Anne’s gaze is fixed on the desk in front of her, her expression inscrutable. The silence stretches.

Then, still not looking at her sister, Anne puts down her coffee cup.

“Well you have never followed my example before, Marian,” she says at last, her tone icy, “I don’t see any reason for you to start now.”

With a small huff of exasperation, Marian takes her letter and marches from the room.

As soon as she has left, Ann gets up and closes the door behind her.

“What was that about?”

Anne pauses for a moment then picks up her paper knife and briskly slits opens her letter. “What was what about?”

“What Marian said just then, about your previous ‘disappointments’?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea. I do my best not to interrogate too deeply the workings of Marian’s mind.”

“Oh Anne, I know it must have meant something. You looked so grave.”

But Anne is no longer listening, she has scanned the first few lines of her letter and her face, if possible, has grown graver still. Ann, at once fearing bereavements or sudden illnesses or disaster at the pit, moves to stand by her side.

“Anne?” she says gently, “Anne, what is it?”

When Anne doesn’t answer, Ann looks over her shoulder at the letter, which, she is relieved to see, is not black-edged. It is from a Mariana Lawton. It is very short.

_The die is cast_ , the letter says, _and Mary must abide by the throw. You, at least, will be happy and this will teach her to be so who has nothing to hope for herself._

Ann stares at the words in confusion. With a slow sinking feeling in her stomach she looks back to Anne.

“Anne?” she says again, tentatively. “Who is that from?”

After another moment's silence, Anne shakes herself from her reverie. She blinks up at Ann, as though trying to bring her back into focus.

“It is from,” she swallows and places the letter facedown on her desk. “It is from my friend Mrs. Lawton. Did you see what she wrote?”

“Yes. Sorry. I didn’t mean to pry, only you went so pale.”

“Mariana must have heard of your moving here with me,” Anne says slowly. “She is afraid that it will change things between me and her... alter our friendship in some way.”

Ann looks at her sharply, “Why should it?”

Anne – and it is the first time Ann has ever seen it – flounders.

“Only that,” she says at last, haltingly, “perhaps, with you at Shibden, she thinks I shall have less... less time to call on her at Lawton Hall.”

“I wouldn’t–”

But Anne hurries on, “Is it not how Catherine Rawson or Miss Briggs must feel, surely, about you moving from Crow Nest? They would be saddened too to think that they will see less of you.”

Catherine has not said two words about Ann moving to Shibden and if she did, Ann thinks, they would be favourable.

“Could we not pay a call together? Then Mrs. Lawton would see–”

Anne shakes her head, still pale, “No that would...” she stops herself and when she speaks again her voice is steadier, “Mariana and I have been friends for a long time. She does not like it when my affections turn elsewhere, that is all. She will come round, by and by. She will have to.”

So, Ann thinks, Mrs. Lawton too.

\--


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The next morning dawns bright and frosty and the inhabitants of Shibden bundle themselves in shawls and warm cloaks before setting off for church. Ann had slept fitfully and woken early from a dream of a set of scales and of women, the size of weights, being placed onto it one by one._
> 
> Ann moves into Shibden and soon comes to realise that she is not the first woman to have been brought across the threshold by Anne Lister.

The next morning dawns bright and frosty and the inhabitants of Shibden bundle themselves in shawls and warm cloaks before setting off for church. Ann had slept fitfully and woken early from a dream of a set of scales and of women, the size of weights, being placed onto it one by one. She is glad of the fresh air and the chance to breathe deeply and to clear her head.

After the strange letter from Mrs. Lawton, that had had such an effect on Anne, Ann had wanted to pry further, but Anne had excused herself from the room almost at once and remained absent until late into the evening. Then she had appeared in the doorway, as Ann had been readying herself for bed, smiling and easy, as though nothing at all had happened, and had proceeded to be so affectionate, so delighted, still, to find Ann, _Ann, her wife_ , in her bedroom, in her bed, that Ann could not bring herself to spoil the moment with further questions.

Then the morning had been busy and there had been no chance for talk or for awkwardness, so it is only now, in the stillness of the crisp air, walking side by side with Anne to the Halifax parish church, that the weight of the previous days’ strangeness comes upon Ann once more and she finds herself at a loss for what to say. At Anne's side, so close their shoulders brush, she is suddenly conscious of a gulf widening between them, a chasm full of questions, none of which are appropriate for a walk to church surrounded by the Lister household. And yet she cannot bring herself to make small-talk either, to talk of the weather or the plans for the day seems too unbearably trivial.

Anne appears deep in thought too, though whether she is preoccupied with the same concerns as she, Ann cannot tell. Their silence is maintained all the way from the hall, down the old bank and along the edge of the estate, and is only interrupted when Anne spots a tumbled down wall bordering a farm house and stops to talk to the tenant about it. Ann, relieved, walks on without her.

She is not alone for long though, for a few moments later Marian falls into step beside her, looking slightly nervous.

“I wanted to apologise,” she begins tentatively, “for the upset yesterday.”

When Ann looks at her in surprise, she rushes on, “In the sitting room, yesterday evening. It wasn’t kind of me to say… well, what I said.”

Ann feels her heart quicken in her chest. In the aftermath of the letter’s contents, she had quite forgotten about the fight between Anne and Marian that had preceded it.

“About Anne’s… disappointments?” she says carefully.

“Yes, and about her moving on quickly. I shouldn’t have … only she made me so cross talking about Mr. Abbott like that.” Marian shakes her head. “But it wasn’t kind to Anne, and it was most ill-mannered of me to say it in front of you.”

“There’s no need to apologise. In fact,” Ann takes a breath, “I wasn’t sure I quite understood what you meant.”

“Well, you know, after everything with Miss Hobart and Miss Browne, and the Belcombes, of course, all that business. She has a wonderful talent, my sister, of… of _gaining favour_ with women, and an even greater talent for falling out of it. We were quite worried about her for a while, especially after Miss Hobart. But then you came along and, you know Anne, she always manages to land on her – "

But, catching sight of Ann’s expression, Marian draws to a halt. “You did know about Miss Hobart,” she says, “didn’t you, Ann?”

“No, I– “ Ann says faintly, “I can’t say Anne’s ever mentioned her.”

Marian blanches, “Oh Lord. I shouldn’t have said anything. Oh Ann, I am sorry. I have made matters worse, as I always do!”

“But who–?”

But they are interrupted then by Anne, who has caught up with them, her cheeks pink and eyes bright from her haste.

“You must remind me to talk to Washington on our return, Ann,” she says, ignoring Marian. “Roberts there has said he shall have the fence mended by next Friday and I should like Washington to check that he keeps to his word. I will not have such eyesores on our land, especially those that can be seen from the road.”

She strides forward and Ann and Marian hurry in her wake.

“The view to Shibden should be untarnished, orderly, an unbroken vista of carefully tended land from the footpath to the crest of the hill. There should not be one garden unmanaged, one fencepost out of place...”

\--

Ann cannot say she pays much attention to her first service at Halifax parish church. Her mind is elsewhere. She goes through all the motions, the sitting and standing and kneeling and speaking with the congregation but the words do not bring their usual peace and comfort. Instead her head is a-whirl with the events of the past few days.

Anne is not being entirely truthful with her, that much is clear. The ‘usual arrangement’, the sly, knowing looks of the servants, Miss Norcliffe’s generosity, Mrs. Lawton’s letter and now the ‘business with Miss Hobart’, which had caused Anne’s family such concern – it all speaks to some eventful past that Ann has not been made privy to.

The thought of the secrecy makes Ann’s heart pound with anxiety. Her mind jumps at once to the worst possible scenarios. A set of beautiful women waiting in the wings, ready to displace her – Miss Hobart, Miss Norcliffe, Mrs. Lawton – all of whom Anne has loved dearly, still loves, will always love, far more so than she could ever love Ann. Or worse, perhaps, that these women mark merely a careless string of dalliances, with Ann in amongst them, ready to be tossed aside as soon as something prettier catches Anne’s eye.

Has she erred terribly in tying herself to Anne, Ann wonders miserably. Shifting in her seat, she turns her eyes to Anne, this woman who is at once so familiar and yet still such a mystery. Anne, it turns out, is paying even less attention to the sermon than Ann is; her head has tipped forward and she is slumbering lightly in the pew.

Faced with Anne’s peaceful countenance, Ann is surprised to find anger rising in her chest. She could shake her. _What is it that you are not telling me,_ she wants to ask, _who are these women, who care so deeply for you, whom everyone seems to know about but me?_

The rest of the service passes in a wretched blur. When the time comes to take the sacrament, Ann follows Marian from the pew in a daze. She has worked herself up into such a state of agitation that she has half a mind to turn tail and race the other way down the aisle, out the door and onwards, without looking back. But the congregation sweeps her forward and she is at the altar before she knows it.

Then a strange thing happens. As she steps forward to take communion, the words of the vicar pierce through her racing thoughts for the first time. They are the familiar words of the sacrament – _The body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life, take and eat this in remembrance_ – and at once Ann is thrown back to the Holy Trinity Church in York, where she and Anne had come to the altar, together, for the first time. And as she kneels and cups her hands, the onyx cabochon on her finger catches the light of the candles. She is mesmerised by it for a second, the way the black stone glints and shimmers in the flame, and, in that small moment of distraction, her mind slows and calms a little.

She thinks back on the sureness she had felt in York, that reverence and solemnity as she had knelt beside Anne. Now, back in Halifax, she takes the bread and then the cup and breathes deeply. _The blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was shed for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life. Drink this in remembrance that Christ’s blood was shed for thee, and be thankful._

She had told Anne on the hilltop above Conery Wood that when she said yes that time, she would mean it, would mean it and would stick to it. They had exchanged rings and, in the little church in Goodramgate, before God, had made their commitment to each other. And here she is, but a few weeks later, already doubting herself and looking for an escape.

Ridiculous, she chides herself as she bows her head, to get in such a state over a few skeletons in Anne’s past. Skeletons that, for all she knows, are not really skeletons at all. Have some courage, she thinks, have some resilience and a little faith in Anne. There is no use in all this agonising speculation – what she needs to do is ask Anne about it, plainly and directly.

The communion received and her mind made up, Ann gets to her feet and smoothes down her skirts and walks back to her seat with purpose.

\--

She waits until the evening to broach the subject. It is after supper and she and Anne have retired for the night. Once they are washed and changed for bed, Anne kneels to stoke the small fire in their bedroom, so that they might sit before it on the easy chairs by the hearth for a little while before turning in for the night.

Ann is sat on the little sofa that had been brought from Crow Nest and has tucked her feet up under her nightgown. She watches Anne, waiting for her moment. Anne fidgets with the fire, restacking the logs, prodding at the embers, blowing at the flames and tutting as she gets soot and sparks on the white of her drawers and nightshirt.

Ann finds, that with Anne’s back turned, it is easier for her to begin.

“I have a question for you. Do you remember,” she starts, “when you first asked me to come and live here?”

Anne makes a noise of assent but does not turn from her task.

“And we were kissing,” Ann continues, “on the sofa and I asked you whether you had done this before.” She looks down at her lap and presses on. “And I meant had you kissed anyone before, another woman I mean and you said you hadn’t but then you looked away, do you remember?”

Anne has turned to face her now, her shoulders a little tense.

Ann hurries on. “It was as though you were making an aside to someone, or a joke, almost, that I wasn’t party to.”

Anne's face, haloed by the blaze of the fire, is inscrutable, “What is your question, Ann?”

“Well I thought that perhaps you weren’t being completely honest with me. When you said you hadn’t. Only then you kissed me again and I forgot all about it. But since being here I have wondered...” Ann looks up at Anne, “Anne, these women that you have mentioned, that your family has mentioned and your servants, they seem important to you in some way that goes beyond common friendship. And everyone seems to know it but me!”

Anne starts to protest but Ann carries on, “I don’t begrudge you a past, Anne, it’s not that I imagine that you arose like Athena, fully formed from your father’s head just before I met you! But I am your wife and I should know you the best of everyone, don’t you think? I don’t like for us to have secrets.”

Anne looks back at the fire for a moment, quiet and still, and Ann feels her chest tighten with fear that she will stay silent and, despite all Ann’s courage in confronting the matter, nothing will be set right after all. But then Anne turns to face her once more and her expression is rueful.

“You are right,” she says and rubs a hand across her eyes. “Of course, Ann you are right. There should be no secrets between us. And I didn’t mean for there to be, not really. Only when one has been secretive for so long, it becomes a hard habit to break.”

She gets to her feet and dusts the soot from her hands. “I will tell you everything, if you’d like, but I think I had better start by pouring us both a drink.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Anne unstoppers the glass bottle and pours them both a good measure of Madeira wine. The liquid flashes amber in the firelight as she hands a glass to Ann. She sips it gratefully, feeling in need of a little fortification._
> 
> _“Yes there have been others,” she says, leaning over to stoke the fire again. “A few before now… Do you really wish to hear all this, Ann?”_
> 
> _“We are married,” Ann says simply, pulling her knees in closer to her. “I think we should know each other's pasts.”_
> 
> Ann moves into Shibden and soon comes to realise that she is not the first woman to have been brought across the threshold by Anne Lister.

Anne unstoppers the glass bottle and pours them both a good measure of Madeira wine. The liquid flashes amber in the firelight as she hands a glass to Ann. She sips it gratefully, feeling in need of a little fortification. There is another chair set side-on to the fire, at the left end of the little sofa, and that is where Anne settles herself with her own glass.

“Yes there have been others,” she says, leaning over to stoke the fire again. “A few before now… Do you really wish to hear all this, Ann?”

“We are married,” Ann says simply, pulling her knees in closer to her. “I think we should know each other's pasts.”

“Well then. I suppose I better start with Miss Hobart.”

“Yes, Marian talked of a Miss Hobart.” And as she says it, it strikes Ann that she has heard Miss Hobart’s name somewhere before, prior to Marian mentioning her, though she cannot think of where.

“Of course she did. Miss Vere Hobart. Cousin of Lady Stuart-de-Rothesay. We took a house together a few summers back, on the south coast.”

And there it is, the memory at once shaken loose – the feeling of trembling legs and brandy on her lips and Captain Lister’s voice saying, “Because something went wrong in Hastings. _Obviously_.”

“This was just before you moved back to Shibden, wasn’t it?”

Anne nods.

“This was... _why_ you moved back to Shibden?”

Anne nods again and takes a deep drink from her glass. “It was not a happy attachment.”

Ann waits for her to continue but she only swallows her drink and says no more.

“What happened?” Ann asks, after another moment's pause.

“Nothing.”

“Anne.”

“Nothing!”

Frustration rises in Ann, “What is the use of–?”

“I am telling you what happened,” Anne cuts her off. “Nothing! Absolutely nothing.”

She takes a deep breath and starts again. “We – Miss Hobart and I – we took the house in Hastings for the summer due to ill health on her account and weariness with Halifax society on my own.

“Miss Hobart was a kind and gentle woman. Within weeks I was very fond of her, more than fond and I think she was fond of me too – though perhaps not quite in the way I wished.”

She is silent for a moment, her finger tapping rapidly against her wine glass, and then her voice bursts forth in a sudden rush of frustration.

“But it is difficult, with the world such as it is, to know exactly where one stands! A woman may smile at you prettily, blush at your compliments, lean on your arm and bid you kiss them goodnight and yet _nothing._ They may talk of travelling together, of settling together, they may make _every_ _profession_ of their pleasure at your company and yet next thing you know, of course, they are engaged to be married. And they are travelling and they are settling. And it is. Not. With. You.”

In the silence that follows, Ann looks at her, stricken. In all her speculations over Anne's past, she had never once considered that some of her love affairs might have been unhappy ones. No wonder Anne did not wish to tell her about them. She starts to reach out to her, at a loss for what to say. But Anne shrugs her away, as though to say not to fuss, and when she speaks again her voice is calmer.

“I made a fool of myself for far too long. I used to hang over her as she played the piano and sing – _try_ to sing. Good Lord, you must never let me sing, Ann – but it was worth the humiliation for it meant I could watch her hands. I am very drawn to hands. It is the first thing I notice of a person – clean nails, soft skin, delicate fingers. I would watch her hands on the piano and imagine I was the keys and that she was running a scale upon my skin.”

“But you never touched her?”

“No, nor she me,” Anne says. “But I would get myself into such a bother imagining it.”

Ann shifts in her seat. She is surprised to find that Anne’s words have begun to stir her. The thought of Anne having to show such self-restraint, but inside longing and burning with desire, sends a queer flicker of heat through her own body. She imagines Anne’s eyes, dark and heavy-lidded, fixed on Miss Hobart’s slender fingers as they stroked across the ivory of the piano.

“Other evenings she would fall asleep with her head in my lap.” Anne laughs. “Can you imagine? It was intolerable. I would sit there, pretending to read the paper and not see a single word. All I could think of was the weight of her in my lap. I would feel her cheek pressed against my upper thigh and her breath hot on my skirts. I would think, if she would just move a little, or if I were to move a little... I never did, of course. I just sat there – in exquisite torment. My legs used to tremble from the effort of staying still, and from the desire not to stay still.”

Tucked up under her nightdress, Ann feels her own legs begin to tremble in a kind of sympathy and the flicker of heat in her stomach grows stronger. She is not sure why Anne’s tale of unrequited love has excited her emotions so. She takes a large gulp of Madeira to cover her confusion. When she looks up from her empty glass she finds Anne watching her, her own glass paused at her lip, a sly smile on her face.

“My, Ann,” she murmurs, “you’ve gone quite pink.”

Ann puts the back of her hand up to feel the warmth of her cheek and tries to rearrange her features into some, more appropriate, expression.

“It’s just so – so sad,” she says, a little feebly, “to think of you wanting her like that, and not being able to have her. She married, did you say?”

“Yes, to some dolt of a Scotsman. You should have seen him. He had the _thinnest_ arms. And anyway you needn’t feel too sorry for me,” Anne’s smile turns crooked, “I was not always so unlucky.”

Ann looks at her for a moment, then feels the tug of a smile at her own mouth, “Really?”

“Of course.” Anne gets up to refill their glasses. “You see, before Hastings there was Paris. And before Miss Hobart there was Mrs. Barlow.”

“Mrs. Barlow?”

“Yes.”

Ann has heard of her too. “She's the one who taught you about the pocket holes.”

“Yes, and she taught me a lot more things besides.”

“Oh?”

“Shall I tell you how it started?” Anne takes a long drink of her wine and Ann is not quite sure if it is the drink or the memory she is savouring.

“I was staying in a small pension at the Place Vendôme in 1825, in an effort to improve my French – _avec peu de succès_! Maria Barlow was an Englishwoman staying there too, a widow. She was a vain, silly thing really and I flattered her too much. But she had been happily married nearly seven years before her husband died at the Battle of Salamanca and was therefore more worldly than any other woman I had gotten into scrapes with before. I found that, I confess, intriguing.”

As Ann watches Anne’s profile in the firelight, the strange heat in her stomach kindles once more. It is stronger now and feels, she decides firmly, like jealousy. She had not considered that, either, that listening to Anne's past might disturb her too. But it is hard not to feel jealous – and it surely must be jealousy that is making her heart pound and her breath quicken so – of this worldly widow. It is clear, from Anne’s tone that she, unlike Miss Hobart, had returned Anne’s affections.

“The pension was a hot-house for intrigue, in fact,” Anne continues. “Always six or seven people there, all strangers to one another, all living together, conversing together, dining together. A thousand petty rivalries and courtships flourished under that roof.”

She takes another sip of her wine, “Mademoiselle de Sans did not care for the company of Colonel Wilson. Colonel Wilson was known to have taken liberties with Madame Chenell. Madame Chenell was a favourite of Madame de Boyve. Madame de Boyve was jealous of Mrs. Barlow. And Mrs. Barlow and I? Well, soon we got on very well together.

“She used to take my arm on our walks along the boulevard to the Tuileries gardens. I was a sympathetic ear to her complaints about the other guests at the Place Vendôme and her worries about her daughter. By and by she was coming to my room after supper to stay a while and continue our conversation.

“One night, our talk turned confidential. I had persuaded her, with not much difficulty, to sit upon my knee and there she began to tell me tales of her married life and the tricks she had used to retain her husband’s affections in between his regiment’s postings in Portugal. I was soon given to understand that, no matter how virtuous and modest her conduct in public, Mrs. Barlow was no saint behind a locked bedroom door.

“She had learnt a thing or two in her years married to Colonel Barlow, you see, and more still in the years since, for she had not been lacking in suitors. She told me all her past indiscretions,” Anne leans back in her chair, her legs sprawled long and lazy in front of her, and looks at Ann, “just as I am doing now. And I, just as you are doing now, listened with my mouth agape.”

Ann blinks at her and hurriedly shuts her mouth. She realises, too, that she has tilted forward in her seat, as though eager not to miss a single word of Anne’s story. Somehow the thought of Anne sat open-mouthed, as a pretty widow whispers in her ear, is just as tantalising as the thought of her trembling with useless desire over Vere Hobart.

“By the time she finished talking,” Anne continues, “there seemed to be no other option than for me to take her to my bed.

“I enjoyed those months in Paris greatly. Maria Barlow was the perfect gentlewoman in company. She would sit demurely in the dining room, listening to our fellow guests, but all the while, under the table, she would be winding her legs around mine or pressing my hand into her lap. Once, at the opera, she wrapped her shawl around us both and, in the dark, as we listened to _Paisiello_ , let me slip my hand down the front of her stays.”

Anne’s eyes are fixed on Ann. “If we snatched a moment alone, I would kiss her throat, just here,” she motions to the skin beneath her jaw and Ann feels her own pulse quicken beneath that tender spot. “She said she saved that space for me alone, that it was mine. But what she liked most,” Anne pauses delicately and licks her lips, “was for me to kiss her between her legs.”

A flash of heat jolts through Ann, she stares at Anne wide-eyed.

“Between her legs?” Her voice comes out hoarse.

“Yes.” Anne leans forward, her eyes not leaving Ann’s face. “I would sit before her and put up her skirts and put my mouth to her queer.”

Ann feels almost faint with the idea. She has never heard of such an act. The thought of it makes her breath come out quick and shallow in the stillness of the room and she cannot seem to slow it.

“Mrs. Barlow was very fond of that,” Anne continues. “She used to beg me to come to her at all hours of the day. I would be there in broad daylight, in the middle of the afternoon, terrified that Cordingley would walk in to find my head buried in her petticoats.”

And all at once it is as though Ann’s mind has lost the ability to finish a full thought, it keeps looping feverishly back to Anne with her head buried... her mouth buried...

“Just kissing?” she asks faintly.

Anne’s teeth flash in the dim light.

“No,” she says, “it is not just kissing. Mrs. Barlow taught me that you could fetch a woman just with one’s tongue and one’s lips.”

The thought makes Ann shift again involuntarily in her seat and, in moving, she is suddenly, startlingly, aware of the wetness on her bare thighs, the wetness that Anne’s words have brought about. It shocks her – to be so blatantly roused by the thought of Anne with another woman, it does not seem right. But she is, she admits now, inarguably roused – not just jealous, not just sympathetic, but trembling and damp from the picture Anne has painted. She does not know whether she wants to be in Mrs. Barlow’s place, or in Anne’s, or merely to be in the room with them both, watching and listening as they give each other pleasure.

Then Anne says, “Perhaps it is best if I show you myself” and the little room narrows around Ann to a single point of focus – Anne’s face, with its dark eyes and its pink, teasing mouth.

She cannot speak for desire; she nods mutely.

Setting her drink aside, Anne moves from her chair to kneel before Ann, in one swift, fluid motion. She takes Ann's glass from her unresisting fingers and sets it to one side. Then she tugs at Ann’s legs, which she has kept tucked up on the sofa, and moves them so that both of Ann’s feet rest on the floor. Finally, she takes the hem of Ann’s nightdress and slowly pushes it up, guiding Ann to lift her hips until the cloth is gathered around her waist. Her eyes sweep appreciatively across the pale skin she has just uncovered, lingering for a moment on the slick just visible on Ann's thighs.

“I would kneel like this,” Anne says, “and she would open her legs for me.”

She presses at Ann’s thighs until they are spread wide, exposing the thatch of blonde hair and the flesh between her legs. Ann, already damp with desire and, bared like this, feels a drop of wetness slide from her to the velvet seat beneath. Anne’s eyes flicker to that spot.

“She had a very pretty queer,” she murmurs, not lifting her gaze from the space between Ann’s legs. “Just like yours – plump and sleek – but dark instead of fair.”

Anne reaches out and gently runs one finger down the centre where Ann cleaves, parting the lips. When she takes her hand away, her fingertip shines wetly in the light from the fire. Ann watches, mesmerised, as Anne lifts the finger to her lips and licks the wetness from it.

“You taste sweeter,” she says. “I thought you would.”

Then before Ann can stammer a response, Anne takes ahold of her hips and pulls her forward, until she is sat on the edge of the seat. Then she settles again between Ann’s legs and dips her head to press a kiss to the pale skin at the inside of Ann’s knee.

Ann grips the edge of the seat and tries to stop her trembling as she watches Anne mouth a path up her thigh.

“She taught me to tease,” Anne says softly, when she reaches Ann’s hip.

She kisses the sharp bone there, just a hint of teeth and then she trails her tongue from the ridge of Ann’s hip down the crease where her leg meets her body to the delicate skin at the top of her upper thigh. She dawdles for a moment there, pressing kisses first to one thigh, then the other, always just grazing, just missing, the space in between, where Ann wants to feel her lips the most.

It is as though her flesh is radiating heat, Ann thinks, pulsing with the need for Anne to touch it. She feels like she could scorch Anne with desire. At last, just when Ann is sure she will sob from anticipation, Anne moves her head so that her mouth hovers above the wet, pink flesh at Ann’s centre. She waits for a moment more, letting Ann feel her breath brush across her, letting her quiver and dampen the seat beneath her with longing, then she leans forward and licks a slow, hot stripe from the base of Ann’s queer to its top.

Ann’s hips bolt forward and she cries out. Having Anne’s tongue upon her at last is the most astounding and wondrous thing. She is dizzy with the feel of it and the thought of it, of Anne’s clever, witty tongue sliding against her flesh. Anne licks at her again, a little firmer, and it is as though she is licking the very core of Ann, the centre where every feeling, every sensation converges. Ann feels raw and tender with the pleasure of it, dazed by the intimacy.

She looks down but has to look away again at once. It is too much somehow, too overwhelming, to see Anne knelt at her feet, her dark head, working in earnest now, pressed between the white of her thighs. She stares at the fire instead and pictures Anne’s tongue as the flames, licking and burning and consuming her.

When Anne takes the delicate bump of flesh at the top of Ann's queer between her lips and sucks gently on it, Ann feels as though she has caught alight herself. Her hips jerk again and her back arches. Flares and sparks of pleasure blaze through her, radiating out from Anne’s mouth. She must have cried out again for Anne pulls away to try and quieten her.

“I know I am good, Ann,” she says looking up at her, her lips and chin slick, her dark eyes amused, “but you must try not to scream so. You will wake the whole house. Here –”

She takes Ann’s hands and lifts them so that they rest on Anne’s head, “Put your hands here,” she says, “that is how Mrs. Barlow used to guide me to where she liked it best.”

So Ann threads her fingers through Anne’s hair and bites her lip to stifle her moans. It is hard to stay quiet though, for without her own noise to cover them, she can now hear the sounds that Anne is making – messy, wet sounds, as though she is eating ripe summer pears from the kitchen garden. And Anne’s noises too, little moans and murmurs against Ann’s flesh, as though nothing brings her more pleasure than pressing her face into Ann’s queer.

Listening to it is enough to send Ann hurtling towards her edge and she feels the familiar yearning between her legs. Every sound Anne makes, every swipe of her tongue, every movement of her lips take Ann closer and closer to the final peak of pleasure. She shifts her hips, grinding herself desperately against Anne’s mouth and urging her forwards with the hands in her hair. She is wanton in her excitement, and she is close, so close, so –

But then Anne stops and Ann’s hips are left to thrust into air. Her eyes fly open and she cannot help the small whimper that escapes her lips.

“I think I have got you too excited,” Anne says looking up, her mouth wet and swollen, “and I shall not be able to finish my list.”

“Your list?” Ann is panting.

“Of women.”

“There are more?”

Anne rests her chin on Ann’s thigh and smiles.

“There is Mariana”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Anne picks up Ann’s discarded glass and drains the rest of the wine. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and sits back on her heels, looking at Ann. Her expression grows a little thoughtful._
> 
> _“You must ask me again about Mariana,” she says at last, “another time, when we are both in a better state for it.”_
> 
> _Ann, who is still trying to catch her breath, the space between her legs throbbing for the want of Anne’s tongue, blinks dazedly and tries to follow this sudden turn in conversation._
> 
> Ann moves into Shibden and soon comes to realise that she is not the first woman to have been brought across the threshold by Anne Lister.

Anne picks up Ann’s discarded glass and drains the rest of the wine. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and sits back on her heels, looking at Ann. Her expression grows a little thoughtful.

“You must ask me again about Mariana,” she says at last, “another time, when we are both in a better state for it.”

Ann, who is still trying to catch her breath, the space between her legs throbbing for the want of Anne’s tongue, blinks dazedly and tries to follow this sudden turn in conversation.

“Mariana Lawton?” she says. “She is the one who sent you the letter.”

“Yes, and when I told you that she does not like it if my affections turn elsewhere, that was no falsehood. Although, as you may have guessed, there is more to her jealousy than fear over a waning friendship.”

“You were lovers?”

“Yes, and she has been in my life, in one way or another, for a very long time.”

Ann’s face must betray the twist of unease that gives her, for Anne reaches over to her at once and shakes her knee. “You have nothing to fear from Mariana,” she says firmly. “Our history together is just that – history.”

She rises to her feet and comes to sit next to Ann on the sofa as she continues, “I met her when I was nineteen and I loved her wildly, blindly, as one only can when one is young. But then, for various reasons – none of them admirable – Mariana married. And nothing was right after that.”

Ann is suddenly very conscious of her tucked up nightdress and her bare legs, she begins to tug at the hem to cover herself, but Anne shoots out a hand to stop her.

“Leave it,” she says, “I am not done with you yet.”

Ann takes her hand away, but she feels wound tight and agitated. Anne had brought her to such a pitch with her mouth and the abrupt halt of it, without any release, and the sudden, solemn turn to the conversation has left her on edge. She is unsure whether to laugh or to sob.

“You cannot tease me so, Anne,” she says a little plaintively. “You cannot tell me about a woman you have loved and who has broken your heart and expect me to sit here and be warm for you still.”

Anne raises an eyebrow, “You did not seem to mind when I was telling you about Mrs. Barlow.”

“That was different,” Ann says, still playing with her hem, “you have got me out of temper for it now.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Anne lean back against the arm of the chair as though to take in Ann, and Ann’s mood, fully.

“Well,” she says after a moment, and Ann can hear the smile in her voice, “we must see what we can do about that.”

Ann still refuses to meet her eye and so, when Anne reaches over and grabs her by the hips, she is taken completely off guard, and when, in one swift movement, Anne tugs her into her lap, she has no time to resist, and when, all at once, she finds herself blinking down at Anne, knelt astride her on the sofa, her only protest is a small yelp of surprise. Anne winds her arms around the small of her back and pulls her closer.

“You see, Ann, Mariana could be very persuasive,” she says. “Even when all love was lost between us and our connection was more of habit than of anything else, one thing endured.” She smiles up at Ann, “She could always talk me into bed.”

Ann looks down at her sceptically, resisting her embrace, “And that is what is what you are going to do to me, is it?”

Anne laughs, “I am going to try.”

She settles Ann more snugly into her lap

“Once Mariana was married, we might go several months without seeing each other. In the intervening time I would grow cool towards her. And when we did finally come together again, I would be disagreeable and reluctant to see her. She would have to work hard, sometimes, to win back my affections.”

Anne's voice drops a little lower and, despite herself, Ann finds she has dipped her head to listen closer.

“First she would have to tease me out of my bad humour,” Anne is saying. “Then she would have to laugh me into a good one, and, finally, she would come and whisper in my ear such sweet things that I would forget all about my coolness and her husband and the months that had passed between us.”

“What would she say?”

“She used to call me Fred, did I tell you that?”

Ann shakes her head.

“She would say,” and here Anne leans up to put her mouth to Ann’s ear, her face pressed to Ann’s flushed cheek, “I have missed you, Fred.” Her voice is hot and breathy in the shell of Ann’s ear. “You do not know how I have suffered for the want of you.”

Ann shivers.

“I want you,” Anne is whispering now, “and I cannot wait another moment.” She sighs a little and presses closer so that all Ann can hear is her voice and the thud of her own heartbeat. “Oh don’t be cruel, Freddy, and make me wait any longer.”

And with that, Ann’s body is taut with desire again. It shocks her with its suddenness. It is as though all the excitement that Anne had built up with her tales of Miss Hobart and Mrs. Barlow has just been lying dormant this past quarter of an hour and now Anne, and her low, needy voice, have put a match to it.

She wriggles in Anne’s lap and feels the other woman smile against her ear. She is certain that Anne must be able to feel the renewed warmth and dampness between her legs. Anne pulls away and, when Ann looks down, she finds Anne’s face upturned and smirking at her. “I thought you might like that.”

Ann blushes at being so easily read, but only says, as calmly as she can, “You are right. It is… persuasive.”

“Well let me see if I can persuade you further.”

She reaches for Ann’s nightdress, still bunched up around her waist and tugs it gently up, over Ann’s head and off. Then she lounges against the sofa, to better taken in the sight of Ann, stretching her left arm along its back, and letting her right hand come to rest on Ann’s bare thigh. Her expression is composed, as she rakes her eyes over Ann, now naked and restless in her lap, but the palm of her hand is very hot on Ann's leg and there’s a flush rising on the jut of her cheekbones.

“You see she didn’t just talk me _into_ bed,” she murmurs, and they both watch as her right hand begins a slow traverse up Ann’s thigh. “She liked to talk _in_ bed too... She would tell me what to do, and how to do it.”

Ann’s breath catches as Anne’s fingers reach the point where her legs join, her knuckles just brushing against the damp golden curls.

“And what it felt like…There,” Anne continues in a voice not quite her own and they watch together as her fingertip nudges between the curls, and rubs the wet flesh beneath. “That, there, oh there… How sweet, how _delicious_ …”

Ann, so primed from earlier and heated by Anne’s warm tone and words, has to bite her lip to stifle a groan. She feels that, in a few short seconds, she could be gasping and shaking around Anne’s fingers and that things will be over before they have even begun. The idea is both irresistible and oddly dissatisfying. It gives her an idea.

“Stop,” she says a little breathlessly and Anne’s hand stills at once. Her eyes flick up to Ann, her expression watchful.

“Not there,” Ann says. “Not straight away.”

Anne blinks at her for a moment and then a small smile plays across her lips. She inclines her head and lifts both hands up, fingers spread in a gesture of surrender, “What would you have me do instead?”

Ann takes a breath, “Play with me a little.”

She is sure her cheeks must be blazing in the dim light, flushed by her own daring, but she holds her chin firm and is rewarded for her boldness for, when Anne speaks at last, her voice is thick with lust.

“As you wish,” she says.

Anne brings her hands, the right still wet from Ann’s lap, to Ann’s breasts, first stroking the soft plumpness above her ribcage, then toying with the nipples, rolling the flesh to stiff peaks between her finger and thumb. Ann arches into her touch.

“Now your mouth,” she whispers.

And without hesitation Anne bends her head and puts her lips to Ann’s breast, taking her nipple into her mouth and sucking gently.

“Like that,” Ann says closing her eyes and tilting her chest up and against Anne’s mouth, “like that.”

Anne’s hands, now free to wander, slip lower again, stroking down Ann’s sides, petting at her waist, her hips.

“Can I –?” she asks, breaking away from a moment.

“Yes.”

“Here?”

“Yes.”

And Anne slides her palm under Ann, so that Ann’s queer is just cupped in the heat of it. She grinds down almost unconsciously, and she feels herself cleave slickly against the warmth of Anne’s hand. She hears Anne groan and, when she looks down, finds her staring, her mouth slack, transfixed by the sight of Ann moving against her palm.

“Hold still,” Ann says and Anne obeys, her hand outstretched, motionless, her arm braced against her own thigh. Ann rubs down against it once more, the heel of Anne’s palm just nudging against the bump of flesh at the top of her queer. She sets up a slow, rolling pace with her hips. Her flesh pushes and glides across Anne's palm. She feels drenched, dripping, wet through from her desire.

“Now more,” she whispers after a while. “Your fingers.”

Anne looks up at her with heavy-lidded eyes and then, without breaking their gaze, she crooks two fingers and presses them swiftly up into Ann. Ann sinks down to meet them, gasping as her body gives way. She lifts herself up and then sinks down again, relishing the delicate cling of her flesh to Anne’s fingers, the pressure and fullness inside.

“Can you feel that?” she murmurs, her voice a little wonder-struck. “How wet I am? How wet you have made me?”

Anne groans. She buries her face in Ann’s chest, her breath, quick and shaky against her skin. Ann speeds up her hips, rising and falling, bringing Anne deeper. Anne’s mouth seems to be everywhere, kissing at Ann’s throat, nipping at her collarbone, lapping at her breasts. But it is Anne’s hand that Ann is concentrating on, the left hand that has now come up to join the right and is drawing quick, messy circles between the lips of Ann’s queer.

Ann finds that her tongue, now loosened, is unable to stop. Desperate, needy words of encouragement pour from her in a breathless stream, “You are so good Anne. So good, so clever,” and “oh Lord” and “Anne, Anne, Anne.”

Her pleasures, when they come at last, are violent. They wrack through her like a fever, leaving her shaking and trembling against Anne's hands, a sheen of sweat on her limbs, her chest tight from gasping. The ripples of sensation that shudder through her are so intense that when they finally ease, she feels weak and wrung out. She slumps forwards to rest her head in the crook of Anne’s neck, breathing heavily.

But she barely has the chance to settle and catch her breath, to stop quaking and pulsing around Anne’s fingers, before Anne is taking her hand away and doing her best to tug them both to their feet. Ann’s head is so dazed and her legs so beset with trembling that Anne has to put her shoulder under Ann’s arm to get her to stand.

As they stagger from the sofa Ann realises Anne is in more of a state than she has ever seen her. Her hair has whipped loose from its braid, her cheeks are flushed, her eyes dark. Even in the dim light from the dying fire, Ann can see that the lap of Anne’s drawers has turned almost sheer from her wetness. She is panting in desire. She seems entirely focused on one task and that is to get Ann to bed as quickly as possible.

So Ann allows herself to be hurried and jostled and laid swiftly down onto the sheets of the bed. Anne is upon her at once. She presses their mouths together, urgent and insisting, her tongue entwining with Ann’s. Ann, lulled and sated from her pleasures, gives in to Anne’s wildness docilely, opening her mouth, opening her legs.

But when Anne pushes down her drawers, not even stopping to remove them fully, so great is her haste, and then puts her queer to Ann’s and grinds down, it is too much suddenly, too tender, too raw and Ann cries out.

Anne pulls away at once, “What is it?” she looks down at Ann in alarm. Seeing her pained expression, she grimaces, “Lord Ann, have I hurt you?”

“No it is just – you must give me a moment. Sorry, Anne,” she bites her lip and laughs. “Only you were on me like the devil. I’ve never seen you so wild and it pinched a little is all. I’m tender still. I'll be right again in a second or two.”

Anne shifts her weight off Ann. “Of course,” she says. She props herself up on one elbow and closes her eyes for a moment, evidently trying to master herself. “Of course. I am sorry for being so rough. I wasn’t thinking of – well, I wasn’t thinking at all. I don’t know how it is, but you had me in such a fever, I swear Ann, I could not bear another moment without being near you.”

Ann reaches out and pets lazily at Anne’s face; her cheek is flushed and warm under her palm, her breathing still unsteady.

“Why don't you tell me about another girl,” she murmurs. “Is there another? Give me a moment to regain my strength and tell me one more story.”

Anne leans into her touch and, after a thoughtful pause, she starts to smile.

“There is another,” she says, “and perhaps it is fitting that we talk about her now… She was always one to go too hard and too fast at a thing.”

Ann relaxes back into her pillows and looks up at her, “Go on.”

\-- 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I think it’s time to tell you about Isabella.”_
> 
> _“Oh yes?”_
> 
>  _“Mm yes, Isabella Norcliffe. Her friends call her Tib. She is the one who sent us the pheasant and the hare. She loves to ride horses and to hunt, to drink and to eat. I must introduce you to her some day. I think you shall like her... she shall certainly like you."_
> 
> Ann moves into Shibden and soon comes to realise that she is not the first woman to have been brought across the threshold by Anne Lister.

“I think it’s time to tell you about Isabella.”

“Oh yes?”

“Mm yes, Isabella Norcliffe. Her friends call her Tib. She is the one who sent us the pheasant and the hare. She loves to ride horses and to hunt, to drink and to eat. I must introduce you to her some day. I think you shall like her.”

Even in the dim light from the candle by the bed, Ann can see that Anne's smile has turned wolfish, “She shall certainly like you. But you must be careful with Tib, her passions are always excited by grossness.”

Ann blinks at her lazily from the pillows, “Grossness?”

“Lewd talk. Lewd acts. Whenever I was with her she was always on at me to do something new, do more of it, do it harder, do it faster. She would try to have you in bed as soon as looking at you, and me alongside you. She has a great... appetite, Isabella. For everything in her life. She is not easily satisfied.”

Ann, who knows her part well now, says innocently, “Oh? What do you mean?”

And Anne, in turn, plays hers, “Well let me tell you a story,” she begins, settling more comfortably by Ann’s side, “about Isabella’s insatiability. There are many I could tell, but there is one in particular that I think you will like.”

Even through her content, drowsy glow, Ann feels a little shiver of excitement for what will come. She stretches languorously against the sheets, and does not miss the flicker of appreciation as Anne’s gaze drops to watch her move. The evening has taken an entirely different turn to that which she expected, though she can hardly say she minds. When she thinks back to the anxious dread she had felt at the thought of asking Anne about her past lovers, she could laugh. Perhaps she should not be surprised though, Anne has always had a way of making the best of a situation.

“Let me tell you the story of the winter of 1818,” she is saying now, looking down at Ann with a sly smile, “when my visit to the Norcliffes at Langton Hall coincided with that of Miss Mary Vallance. Miss Vallance was a friend of poor Emily, Tib’s younger sister who had died abroad the year before. She had come to York from London for her health and was a great comfort to the Norcliffes after the loss of their daughter. And she was a particularly great comfort – I soon found out – to Tib.

“I had happened to write to Miss Vallance, at Tib’s request, several times before my stay at Langton and so was pleased to make her acquaintance in person. I found her a sweet, kind-natured girl, very agreeable and eager to please. She was 27 years old and pretty, with blue eyes – like yours – and a wide, obliging mouth.

“We got to know each other better as the days went on. She spoke of an engagement to a young man in the army, but I soon came to think I might succeed with her. She liked to sit tête-à-tête with me after dinner and she would kiss me goodnight very warmly.

“It put Tib in a queer humour to see us together. Though the passion had waned somewhat between us, Tib still came to me each night and she never liked to see me pay court to another. But more than that I fancied she had had her eye on Miss Vallance for herself and did not like me pursuing her quarry.

“I would find her watching us with the strangest expression on her face, part jealousy, part... something else. More than once she burst in on us unannounced as though hoping to catch us in some indecent act, and I was never quite sure if she was relieved or disappointed when she found us doing no such thing.

“Matters came to a head a few weeks into my stay. It was a cold and blustery day and Isabella and I had been out for a walk on the wold. When we came in, tired from the wind and the fresh air, we had retired to our room and laid a little while on the bed. We were still there some three quarter of an hour later when Miss Vallance knocked on the door.

“She had come up wishing to look through some prints of Tib’s, brought back from the continent, but it did not take much persuading to have her come lie between us on the bed. Tib, claiming cold, pulled the sheets up to cover us all and so we lay, talking and dozing, very innocently together –” Anne pauses delicately and looks at Ann, “or so I thought. For, after a little while, I came to realise that Tib was, very quietly, very slyly, teasing and fooling at Miss Vallance under the covers. And, though the poor girl was blushing terribly, she did not seem to dislike it.

“When Tib realised I had smoked them she gave a great laugh and told me I could hardly blame her, for she found Miss Vallance _irresistible_. ‘Don’t you think so, Anne?’ she said, and when I stayed silent, loathe to encourage her, she turned to Miss Vallance and said, ‘Well you don’t mind, do you, Mary?’

“The poor girl blushed all the harder but only whispered faintly, ‘What will you think of me?’ At that Tib laughed again and said, ‘Oh you needn’t worry that Anne will think poorly of you. In fact, quite the opposite. I think she will like you all the more.’

“And, when I looked over Miss Vallance’s shoulder, I saw, to my dismay, that Tib had got herself quite giddy. She was watching for my reaction and her eyes were very bright and her cheeks very pink as though she had worked herself into a heat. And, I confess, when I thought about Miss Vallance pressed between us, I felt a little heated myself.”

Ann can feel a warmth start to rise through her too at the thought of the three women packed close upon the bed, three heads on the cushions, three bodies warm and shifting under the covers.

“Tib, perhaps knowing my mood, or perhaps merely spurred on by her own desires, began to goad me – ‘Go on’, she said, ‘you must give Miss Vallance a kiss to show you don't dislike her’. I knew only too well that Tib, once she was set on a thing, was not likely to drop it. So, thinking only to placate her, I lent forward and gave Miss Vallance a kiss.”

Having been propped up on one elbow, Anne now moves to lie down beside Ann so that are face to face on the pillow.

“I meant it to be a very chaste kiss,” she says and her voice has dropped to a low, confiding murmur. “Only when I went to kiss her,” she moves a fraction closer to Ann and Ann finds she is suddenly unable to look away from her mouth, so that she sees every syllable, every flash of teeth, every curl Anne’s tongue makes when she says, “her mouth was warm and open.”

Heat spins through Ann like smoke and she feels her own mouth part.

“And when our lips were pressed together,” Anne is so close to her now that Ann can feel her breath, hot on the wetness of her parted lips, “Miss Vallance put her tongue very gently to mine.”

With the last words Anne closes the gap between them and touches her lips to Ann’s. It is chaste for a moment, and a moment only, and then her tongue slips into Ann’s mouth and her hand comes up her jaw and there is nothing of innocence in the way they press and cling together.

They kiss wildly, their tongues clashing, their lips wet and eager. Ann leans desperately into Anne and she feels an answering striving from her, her every limb, every muscle, where she presses against Ann, taut and shaking from desire.

Between feverish kisses Anne says, “She soon began to gasp against my mouth,” her kisses trail along Ann’s jaw, “and I realised,” nipping at the delicate skin at her throat, “that Isabella had taken up Miss Vallance’s petticoats,” her hand is stroking down Ann’s side, to her waist, to her hip, and she whispers against Ann’s neck, “and put two fingers inside her.”

Ann moans and shuts her eyes as wetness floods between her legs. The thought of it, of pretty, obliging Miss Vallance, her skirts pushed up around her hips, pinned between Anne’s kisses and Tib’s fingers, is enough to make her flesh quicken and throb. She has never heard, never dreamt, of such a thing – and yet with Anne’s words the scene unfolds before her clearly. She sees it and she _aches_.

She waits for Anne to do as she as done before and put her hands to work as she continues her story. She can feel, very keenly, the lack of Anne’s fingers between her legs. But Anne’s hand stays resting lightly at her hip.

“It soon became clear that Tib’s hand alone would not answer,” she says and she releases Ann’s hip, moving her hand to the fastening of her drawers. “The poor girl was twisting between us, thrusting back onto Tib and pressing forward onto me. She was growing quite frantic.”

Ann watches as Anne, with fingers now fumbling from desire, loosens the tie of her drawers again and slides them down her hips. Ann’s eyes are drawn at once to her damp curls and the glimpse of pink flesh at their centre, which shines wetly in the last of the candlelight. She feels her hips twitch involuntarily in her longing to get closer to Anne.

“I knew the only solution was to pull up my own skirts,” Anne says breathlessly, “and position myself –” she shifts so that she is held half on top of Ann, their laps an inch apart, “like this” – Ann half expects her to tease, to hold back, but now they are so close Anne seems unwilling, unable, to delay – “and to give the girl” she says and thrusts forward as she speaks “what she needed” and presses herself tightly to Ann.

They groan in unison. No matter how many times they do this, the moment never fails to shake Ann. The raw astounding intimacy of flesh joined to flesh, of their hips locked, of their legs entwined. It feels reverent, sacred. She closes her eyes and focuses on the heat pulsing from Anne’s core to hers. In the stillness she tries catch her breath but then Anne pulls back and presses forward again and Ann is panting worse than ever.

They are both of them so drenched between their legs that they do not rub so much as glide, the lips of their queers parting and sliding, slick with desire. Each nudge against that sensitive spot at her centre sends tight spirals of pleasure across Ann's hips and down the backs of her legs. When Anne drops her face to Ann's neck and begins to move in earnest Ann forgets to breathe altogether.

“It was thrilling,” Anne pants into Ann’s ear, “to press tight to Miss Vallance and feel her jolt against me from the thrust of Tib’s hand. I would roll my hips into her so that she was pushed back onto Tib’s fingers. It would make her gasp,” Anne's voice is low and heated, “and it would make Tib gasp and I could hear my own gasps too until it seemed the three of us breathed and moved as one.”

She lifts her head suddenly so that she can meet Ann’s gaze. She looks more roused than Ann has ever seen her, her eyes glassy, her cheeks in a hectic flush.

“Can you picture it, Ann?” she says, her hips rolling relentlessly against her. “You and I together as we are now, while another girl tends to you from behind – my eyes on you, my body on you, my hands free to do this –” she cups Ann’s breast in her hand, “and this” she swipes a thumb over the sensitive flesh of Ann’s nipple.

Ann arches into her touch. She feels mad with desire. She can picture it so vividly that she feels it, that feeling of being pinioned from both directions, caught between hand and flesh, captured and pleasured. The intensity of her imaginings makes her cry out. She pushes her breast eagerly against Anne’s pinching fingers and puts her hand to the warm curve of Anne’s lower back to urge her forward.

“Miss Vallance made those noises too,” Anne says, her hips now moving in a rapid staccato, “until I had to put my hand over her mouth to quieten her for fear she would bring the whole household to the room.”

She lifts her hand from Ann's breast to her mouth and presses her fingers to her lips. Ann opens her mouth and sucks a little at the fingertips just to see Anne pant.

“’See how she likes it,’ Tib said to me,” Anne whispers, her eyes caught dazedly at Ann's mouth, “and it was true. She was so passionate, so wet, so eager that it could not be mistaken. I felt her grow taut between us and Tib, knowing how I liked it best, held her still for me so that I might rub myself hard upon her.”

In mimicry of her words Anne bears down on Ann, pressing them flush together and grinding down with the swollen, wet heat of her queer.

“Our bodies were so close that when we fetched her, Tib and I, working her together like that, I felt every pulse of it.” Anne’s thrusts are growing sloppy, her voice hoarse. “It is the sweetest thing,” she says, “to feel a woman come undone beneath you. It is the sweetest – ”

And then, at last, Ann feels it, feels Anne flood against her, the warmth and wetness spilling onto Ann’s thighs, the flesh pulsing. She can feel the movements of Anne’s queer very distinctly against her own, feels her clench and tremble and clench again and then at last grow still. It is the sweetest thing.

At length, Anne rolls off her and comes to rest on her back. They lie side by side in silence for a moment, the only sound the gradual slowing of their breathing.

“What about Tib?” Ann says at last.

Anne looks at her for a moment then laughs. “Poor Tib,” she says affectionately, “she worked herself into quite a lather, handling Miss Vallance and watching us together but she never did succeed with us. For, not a minute after the two of us had finished, her mother knocked on our door.”

Ann pulls a face in horror.

“That is the exact expression Miss Vallance made and she scrambled to the foot of the bed as though she had been scalded. She had only just set her skirts to right when Mrs. Norcliffe came in. What she thought of us all I cannot imagine, for I was bright red and Isabella looked quite ill with frustration.

“When she went away again, Miss Vallance was too frightened to get back into bed. And the dinner bell went not long after that. Tib stewed all evening, in a host of miseries, and when we got into bed that night I, having had such a good kiss from Miss Vallance, was in no mood for another. She was more careful in her goading after that.”

“So,” Ann says, counting them out on her fingers, “Miss Hobart, Mariana, Tib and Miss Vallance – is that it, Anne?” She laughs, “Say it is for I am not sure I can take many more tonight.”

Anne reaches for her hand, interlacing her fingers with those that Ann had used to count out her lovers. She brings them to her mouth and kisses the back of Ann’s hand. “There is one more that I would like to tell you about,” she says, “then I promise I shall let you sleep.”

“One more?”

“The first,” and Anne leans over Ann and blows out the candle set beside the bed, plunging the room into darkness.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“First of all, there was Eliza.”_  
>    
> Ann moves into Shibden and soon comes to realise that she is not the first woman to have been brought across the threshold by Anne Lister.

Without the light from the candle, the room is black as pitch. Ann blinks, trying to adjust her eyes in the sudden, disorienting dark. She senses, rather than sees, that Anne is no longer by her side. She casts about across the bed and, finding nothing, says uncertainly, “Why did you blow out the candle?” And then, when there is no answer, “Anne?”

She hears movement at the foot of the bed and then a voice, from the same direction, says, “First of all, there was Eliza.”

It makes Ann start, the darkness unnerving her, and, when she speaks, she is surprised to hear her voice tremble, “Eliza?”

There is the soft sound of cloth falling to the floor, closer now and then the bed dips behind Ann and, in her ear, comes, “We were bedfellows, at school.”

The voice is quiet, little more than a whisper, just recognisable as Anne’s, but softer somehow, younger. Ann finds herself whispering in turn, afraid to disturb the stillness.

“How old were you?”

She is shifted forward slightly and then she feels Anne curl her body to her back, folding herself around Ann. An arm bands tight across Ann’s stomach and pulls her closer, and she realises that the sound of cloth must have been the last of Anne’s nightclothes, for she can feel that Anne is completely naked now, her bare breasts pressed tight to Ann’s back, her body one hot lithe line behind her.

“We were thirteen when we met,” the voice continues in Ann’s ear. “My parents had sent me away to board at a school in York. Eliza and I were put together in a room at the top of the boarding house, up in the attic. It had sloping ceilings and a corner that always leaked. It was meant as punishment, I suppose, for waywardness, but I found a precious thing within those walls.”

Ann swallows, “Her?”

“Myself.” Anne’s voice is dreamy, “My true self. Before Eliza and that attic room I had not supposed a girl could love another girl. I had not read Sappho then or Martial, I had not heard of it. We fell in love and thought we had invented it, that it was a thing created just for us.”

The arm around Ann’s waist shifts and she feels Anne’s fingertips trail softly over the skin of her stomach, up to brush against the soft undersides of her breasts, down again to curl around her hip. After the wildness of the last few hours, the slowness of Anne's touch is disarming. Ann softens beneath it.

“We spent two years perfecting our creation. Building an understanding of our bodies, our… our natures, out of the dark of that little attic room.”

Ann feels her hair brushed from the nape of her neck and then the soft pressure of a kiss on the bared skin there.

“And it is because of Eliza that I have you.”

Ann shivers and shifts in Anne’s arms, turning so that they are face to face, though she still cannot make out Anne’s expression in the dark. “What do you mean?”

“I had known from a very young age that I was odd for my sex,” Anne says. “I was always running with my brothers and getting into scrapes. While Marian hung quietly on my mother’s skirts, I was off climbing trees with John. I knew people thought I was boyish in my looks and my interests, but it was not until Eliza that I found the final piece, a fundamental principle to my being. I was not only gentlemanly in manner and ambition, but in desire too. I wanted a female companion to share my life and my bed. I wanted a wife.

“That desire for companionship has been a constant force throughout my life, in one or another. It drove me from Eliza to Isabella to Mariana, from Paris to Hastings to Halifax. It is the reason I came home and found you.”

In the darkness, the bodies of all those women rise before Ann’s eyes, bright against the black like the floating imprint of the sun on eyelids after gazing too long at the sky. She sees for a moment Mrs. Barlow sprawled with her skirts up, Mariana whispering in her ear, Isabella reaching for Miss Vallance, Miss Vallance reaching for Eliza. And she sees Anne and herself at the centre of them all, curled in against one another, embraced within a tangling and gasping web of women, a mass of silky limbs.

Then she blinks and shakes her head and the women dissolve into the darkness.

“Why did you not marry Eliza, then?” she says slowly, “or Tib or Mariana?”

Anne is quiet for a moment, then sighs and says, “Eliza became sick. Mariana married. Tib’s tempers did not suit me.”

“So you put them aside?” Ann says. “You loved them and then you left them.” It is a struggle to keep her voice steady. “So what is to stop the same from happening to me?”

“Oh Ann, no, no.”

“You might tire of me,” she says softly. “You might leave me like the others.”

“It is different,” Anne says simply. “With you it is different.”

Ann stays very still, breathing in the warm scent of Anne’s skin and eventually Anne continues, “I am not, I have been told, the easiest woman to get along with, I will own to that, and I do not choose to live an easy life. Of these women from my past, it is true there are some I have set aside because we did not suit each other but there are others I was very fond of and would have tried to make a go of, had they not been dissatisfied with me.

“The women in my life have always sought to change me – my ways, my dress, my– my sex. Vere thought me too masculine, Isabella wished me warmer, I embarrassed Mariana with my appearance. But you–” Anne shifts closer and presses her forehead to Ann’s, “you have not wished me swapped or altered or bettered. You have accepted me as I am, right from the start, and you cannot know how much that means to me.”

She presses a kiss to Ann’s lips.

“Do you remember the book you gave me, before you left for Scotland?”

“Of course.”

“With the inscription from Psalm 91? What a comfort that verse was to me, all the while we were apart. You saw my ways, Ann, you see them and not only do you not mind them, but you wish them kept. I had never heard such a sentiment from anyone else.

“And it is not just how you see me, but you yourself, your kindness and your company, your–” even in the dark Ann sees Anne smile and look wryly down at the bedsheets, still rumpled and damp from their lovemaking, “your _enthusiasm_ with me. How would I ever tire of that?

“I asked you to take the sacrament and I did not ask it lightly. We are joined now in the eyes of God, I cannot set you aside like the others. Nor would I wish to.” Her voice is earnest and she brings a hand up to cup Ann’s face. “I love you, Ann.”

Ann rests her face against Anne’s hand and shuts her eyes.

“And I love you,” she says and pauses, then continues quietly, “but there is one thing that must change.”

At once she feels Anne stiffen, and she reaches up to clasp the hand at her cheek, to take it between her own hands.

“I want you to trust me, Anne,” she says, “I want you to never fear that I will judge you harshly.”

“I–”

“And I want you to feel you can tell me anything.”

Anne hesitates then laughs ruefully, “Of course.”

“And you must not lie to me.”

“I won’t.”

Ann brings Anne’s hand up to her lips and kisses the knuckles gently.

“How could anyone want you changed otherwise, Anne?” she says softly, “I cannot understand it.”

\--

It is after ten the next morning when the two women make it downstairs for breakfast, tripping down the stairs with bleary eyes and secretive smiles. They find Marian and Aunt Anne still at the table, finishing their coffee.

“Oh dear,” Aunt Anne says, watching Anne take her seat, “were you up late, Anne?”

“A little,” Anne says, spooning out porridge for Ann and then herself. “I had rather a disturbed night.” She offers Ann the jam pot, her eyes amused. “I was thinking about old times, it kept me up.”

“And what about you, Ann? Did you sleep well?”

“Very well,” Ann says, doing her best to stifle a yawn. “I hardly stirred.”

There is silence for a moment then Marian says, pointedly, “I also slept well. Thank you.”

“Very good, Marian,” Aunt Anne says peaceably.

“I think Ann and I shall go for a walk this morning,” Anne says briskly, ignoring Marian. “Blow the cobwebs away.”

Ann smiles in assent and stirs the jam into her porridge. If she sits much longer in the warmth of the dining room, she thinks, she will end up snoring face-first into her breakfast.

“It is frosty out there,” Aunt Anne says. “Make sure you both wrap up warm.”

“I'll take my greatcoat,” Anne says and then with a smile, “and Ann can take my MacLean tartan.”

“That will do nicely. Are you still planning on going into town, Marian? There are a few things I must ask you to collect for me from Farrer’s.”

“There’s a story to that old shawl,” Anne says in an undertone to Ann, her eyes flashing teasingly, “perhaps I can tell you it on our walk.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to all the people commenting and kudos-ing and reading. You've really made this such a joy. This fic was meant to be a quick little one-shot, but then Anne talking about her exes in bed turned out to be kind of sexy so here we are nearly 15,000 words later... Sorry if I missed out your favourite ex, with Anne's history I had to go with the edited highlights! 🎩
> 
> If you’re interested in the diary entries that inspired each of the chapters, I’ve been writing about them on [my Tumblr](https://winteringinrome.tumblr.com/tagged/wir%3Adiaryshenanigans) under the tag wir:diaryshenanigans.


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